


seal my pardon with thy blood

by sombregods



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bloodlust, Bruises, Cathedral Fucking, Choking, Eventual Happy Ending, Extremely Dubious Consent, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Overstimulation, Painplay, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), the person doing the hurt also does the comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26253517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sombregods/pseuds/sombregods
Summary: ‘I warned you, Felix,’ Dimitri added, almost conversationally. ‘You knew what would happen, if you came back.’Felix said nothing.‘You want it,’ Dimitri said. There was something very like surprise in his voice, almost human, and Felix hated it, hated that his body was responding, hated that—yes—he wanted it, wanted the boar’s force, his body, his violence, wanted to be—to be held down and—‘You’ve always wanted it,’ Dimitri murmured, like a revelation.During the war, Dimitri gets aroused by killing. Felix deals with the fallout, over and over and over again.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 15
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a contribution to the classic 'they fuck in the cathedral' dmlx trope, but my idly wondering if feral dimitri got aroused by killing then pirouetted into 'what if orgasms were the key to felix getting him back, _actually_ '. somehow a quick dubcon porny thing spiraled into 20K of angst? idk.
> 
> please heed the tags. they both want it, but dimitri is not in a place where he's asking for permission. consent is dubious at best. they'll get better at it.

The ruined cathedral was a hollow of its former glory. A void, where lost things came to roost.

Filthy debris and rubble piled where once had stood ordained pews and dizzying pillars. Every chapel and cloister was a closed eye, a gaping maw. The ceiling had caved in, in places, and rotten beams and crumbling stone stood out in the white moonlight. Most of the stained glass windows had been blown out during the attack on the monastery, but the greatest one of all, high and arching above the cracked altar, had stood testament to violence and looting and time—and strange uncanny colors, vicious reds and bright golds and royal blues, splashed across the shattered mosaic.

During the day, monks and soldiers sometimes came, ineffectually trying to clear away the rubble, or praying to the Goddess. They were skittish and scared, though, and they did not like to stay. In the end, the cathedral seemed to frighten people. It was destroyed, desolate, a reminder of all that the monastery had once been, and what it might never be again.

At night, the one-eyed demon roamed the nave, his stinking cloak heavy on his shoulders, a pathetic mockery of a lost king.

In the silence, his voice echoed off the walls, rising and falling from a mutter to a roar. His long, unnatural shadow was silhouetted in the moonlight, stretching out to fantastical proportions. He paced, restless and half-blind, across destroyed frescos and ravaged stone.

And Felix stood in one of the chapels, invisible in the shadows, and kept guard over him.

Hand on his sword, his back to a half-smashed marble column, he stared into the dark until the nighttime cold bit into his hands. It was a lonely lookout; yet, after five years of war, Felix had become long used to standing aegis in the dead of night. He had often been sentinel by a campfire, waiting for dawn, waiting for attack, waiting with his sword at his side for a crack in the silence. His body had settled into a familiar rhythm, heartbeats slow. His breath ghosted white in the pluming air. Around him the cathedral loomed, enormous, its broken ceiling an everlasting threat of falling debris, its shadowy cloisters like the eye-pits of a demonic beast.

Most often he only heard the hoarse, husky voice, groaning after some imagined pain, begging to some imagined ghosts. That voice alone was enough to make Felix’s skin crawl, to make him swallow back disgust and revulsion. But sometimes the boar king dragged himself into view. Then the revulsion became pure abhorrence. The menace in that body was palpable—the filthy fur resting on those too-broad shoulders, the matted, grimy hair, the black gauntlets that curled in like claws, the lance he hauled behind himself with every step: it was unnatural, perverse. It was _wrong_.

No human should look like that. _Dimitri_ should not look like that. Felix tasted bile in his mouth.

It wasn’t Dimitri. Dimitri had been dead for nine years. This was the creature that had inhabited his body since Duscur, at last revealed, at last accepted by its owner. Five years previously, at the Officers’ Academy, he had only feigned humanity: the perfect prince, smiling, gallant, chivalrous, a friend to all and to all a leader—until the first cracks had shown, at Remire; until the Flame Emperor had come, and the beast had finally snapped.

In his nightmares, Felix sometimes still saw the sick smile on Dimitri’s lips when he had crushed those soldiers’ skulls. He dreamed of those gauntleted hands touching him. That awful, fascinating strength.

He blinked, frost in his eyelashes. It was bitterly cold.

His hand spasmed around the hilt of his sword as the mad king shuffled heavily into the middle of the nave, into the waterfall of moonlight that tumbled through the collapsed ceiling. There he stopped, lifting his head into the streaming white. And in that light Felix saw what he had not yet seen: the salient cheekbones, the dark circles under his only remaining eye, the way that his body, though impossibly forceful in combat, was too-narrow at the hips, his armor fast against his prominent ribs. The cloak and fur he pulled around himself hid that, normally. But now … it was obvious; it was more than obvious. Felix swallowed.

The boar was dying.

Dying, slowly, as surely as though he had been speared through with a lance.

‘Father,’ Dimitri murmured, his face silhouetted in the light. ‘Father … I will— I _swear_ to you, I swear, I will … ’

Most of these aimless mutterings. Felix leaned his head back against the marble column, letting his eyes drift shut. Whoever their target, these murmurs had a disturbing quality to them. Dimitri’s voice was rusty, as though he was no longer used to speaking aloud. He spoke in harsh, broken fragments, and sometimes stopped, head cocked, listening to whispers no one else could hear.

‘No, Glenn—I could not … but soon, I promise … _soon_ … ‘

Felix felt a shock traverse him, sour and electric. He gritted his teeth, pressing his shoulderblades against the broken stone. He found that he was shivering, though he could not say whether it was from anguish or from cold.

The moon crowned the boar king with light. He, too, was shaking, a hollow-boned tremor. His gloved fingers grasped fitfully at his lance, as though it was the last thing keeping him safe from his thrice-cursed ghosts.

Then abruptly he whirled on his feet, pushing away from the moonlight; the cloak swirled about his legs, and Felix took in a sharp breath. He took another step back into the shadows, removing himself from any glimmers of light. His hand was still on his sword, gloved fingers curled around the hilt: in a moment he could have it at Dimitri’s throat—could tear it open, if he so chose, in the space of a breath. His heart pounded, painfully, in his throat.

The boar came close, closer. He smelled strongly of sweat, blood, and iron: Felix felt the stink of him, the blasting heat. His cloak brushed against the other side of the pillar. He stopped.

They were inches apart, shoulder to shoulder, and though the dark was near-absolute Felix could still make out the lines of his body. Yet Dimitri said nothing. He had to feel Felix’s presence—he had to know he was being followed, so late at night, the two of them alone here in the cold; this was the tenth night Felix had come to the cathedral; the tenth night since they had found Dimitri again, miraculously alive and yet just as miraculously dead. The beast breathed, heavy, the sound of it emphatic and deep, coming from the throat. Felix stared into nothingness, his teeth set, his body hard as steel, and as cold.

Then Dimitri sighed—soft, slow, sad—and moved away. His long, dragging footsteps echoed until they were gone.

Felix exhaled. His cramped fingers loosened.

The night passed on.

* * *

When he killed, Dimitri was beautiful.

He was always stunning in combat. Before—before, his skill with a lance had been as unmatched among their promotion as Felix’s was with a sword. The longer range had allowed him safety and reach, and he could, in seconds, spear his way through a corps of enemy soldiers. Dismounted, he had moved methodically and efficiently, pivoting on his heel to face his assaillants, sweeping their legs off the ground with a capable swing of his arm and impaling their chests into the ground without a grunt of effort. Often Felix had seen him rise from such a move, getting to his feet in one long supple stretch and removing his lance from a bandit’s guts with a flick of his wrist.

Felix had kept sparring with him out of a sick fascination. Fighting with Dimitri meant fighting with the best of their class. Felix’s disgust and fear had nothing to do with it; and if the ghastly attraction he always felt when he saw Dimtri execute a perfect midair pirouette and parry a mortal strike tightened his chest and hastened his breath—that was best kept to his nights, alone, in his room.

That Dimitri had at least affected regret. He had bowed his head low when he killed.

He had no such compunction now. Carving through a mob of bandits or Empire soldiers caused him no anguish, nor grief: he slaughtered his enemies as though they were nothing, tore the limbs from their bodies and the heads from their necks, never pausing, never hesitating, though their blood stained him from head to foot. Blood dripped from his hands, from his jaw, from his filthy, foul cloak. He passed his hand over his grinning mouth, smearing it, and pushed on, merciless, implacable.

And Felix fought for _that_. For that wild beast, unfettered and savage and lusting for blood. Ingrid, Sylvain, Annette, Ashe, Mercedes—even the Professor, who should damn well know better—they all fought for their mad, lost king, hoping against hope that he would, one day, come back to them.

Even Felix.

Always Felix.

There came a battle, as they were dragging crew after crew of faithless bandits from the ruined villages surrounding Garreg Mach, when Felix did something unforgivable:

He protected his king.

There was no time for thought. He saw the blade that was aimed at Dimitri’s spine, and within moments his own sword was slipping underneath, sweeping up, and piercing through. The marauder fell with a gurgle at his feet: blood bubbled between his lips, and he died.

Felix scoffed, pulled his sword out of the man’s grisly chest.

And then Dimitri had him by the throat. 

‘How dare you,’ he snarled, inches from Felix’s face; the steel of his gauntlets was bruisingly tight on Felix’s flesh, the sharp points piercing his skin. Felix gagged, his breath knocked clean out of him, and tried to lift his sword—but it was knocked out of his hand as though it was nothing. His damned sword. ‘How dare you take what’s mine,’ Dimitri growled, close and intimate, in Felix’s ear.

Felix took in a small, desperate breath. It was useless to struggle against Dimitri’s much, much greater strength, and yet his hands came up to tangle in the matted fur around Dimitri’s neck. His mouth tasted acidic. _Go on. Hurt me. Do it, you coward_. ‘He was going to kill—you,’ he hissed.

‘Then you should have let him!’ Dimitri roared, and the tremor of it made Felix’s ears ring. His bloodied mouth brushed Felix’s cheek, a mockery of a kiss. Felix’s stomach lurched, hard, as red splotches stole over his vision. He shook his head, trying to clear it, weak with lack of air, and gasped:

_‘Never.’_

The gauntlet around his throat clenched, clenched _down_ , and the red blur became a cloud of white. Felix sucked in a ragged, horribly painful breath that burned as it went down, and tilted back his head, trying against hope to escape that implacable hold, suffocating—

Dimitri’s hand loosened, all at once. The white receded, and then came a whimper of pain, which Felix only belatedly realized came from his own throat; then he fell into hacking coughs, as though his lungs themselves were trying to come up in his mouth. He was gripping Dimitri’s shoulders like a lover’s embrace, and panting, soft and desperate. Every breath was a serrated blade through his windpipe.

‘Oh, Felix,’ said Dimitri softly, pityingly. He held him fast; they were body to body, Dimitri’s black breastplate flush against Felix’s chest, and as he struggled to find his breath Felix felt the long hard hot line of Dimitri’s erection against his hip.

‘You—’ Speaking hurt. ‘You’re—’

‘Yes.’ Dimitri sounded like he was merely making conversation, here on the battlefield with corpses at their feet. ‘Do you see what you do to me, Felix?’

‘I do nothing to you,’ Felix rasped, bitterly. Disgust was curdling in his stomach. Dimitri’s thick royal cock was pressed up against him, unyielding and hard and undeniably wanting. ‘Don’t lie to me, even if you lie to yourself,’ he snarled. ‘This—’ He worked his hand down between their bodies and gripped Dimitri, hard, through his leathers— ‘is bloodlust, wild boar. Nothing more. Nothing else. Does it make you so _fucking_ hard, killing others—so fucking good that you’d mount me, right here, if you could? Tell me I’m wrong. _Tell me_.’

Dimitri’s face was distant, emotionless. But his hips jerked, once, compulsively dragging the heavy weight of his cock against Felix’s palm.

A sick glee rose in Felix’ abused throat. ‘Disgusting,’ he spat, twisting his wrist, so that it must—it must, surely—hurt. ‘You fucking diseased beast. Did you enjoy ripping out their throats? I saw you. I saw the look in your eyes when you tore that man’s arm clean off. Would you prefer to use your teeth? Your hands? Your _claws_?’

Dimitri said, low: ‘You know not of which you speak.’

‘I know,’ said Felix. ‘I know you.’

‘Yes.’ A murmur, a smiling rumble. ‘You always did, did you not, Felix? When I didn’t know myself. And now—’

‘I see all of you,’ Felix said, even as a profound despair submerged him. This was Dimitri. This was what Dimitri _was_. There would be no saving him. Ever. ‘All of you disgusts all of me.’

‘Your Highness!’

Felix stiffened. Ingrid stopped a few yards away from them, eyes wide. She, too, was grimy with mud and filthy with blood, her hair lanky about her face.

‘Are they all dead?’ Dimitri said, not looking away from Felix.

Ingrid shook her head. ‘A few escaped, Your—’

‘Useless,’ Dimitri jeered. He let go of Felix so abruptly that Felix staggered. Dimitri picked up his lance, briefly spinning it between his fingers. Said: ‘I expect obedience from you, Felix.’

‘Fuck you,’ Felix spat.

That cold, ugly smile parted Dimitri’s lips. ‘You are a Fraldarius. Act like one.’

Felix wanted to retch. ‘ _Fuck you_ ,’ he said again, teeth gritted, and slowly he knelt to pick up his sword.

* * *

‘Felix—’

‘Let it go.’

‘Felix,’ Ingrid insisted, spurring her pegasus on. 'We have to talk about this.'

‘There’s no point in discussing it.’

‘At least go see Mercedes. Please. Your throat will bruise.’

Already the marks of Dimitri’s gauntlets showed on Felix’s skin, purple-black and ugly.

He touched them, sometimes.

* * *

The cathedral loomed above him, cavernous. Felix’s footsteps were resonant in the silence, striking hard against the stone floor. No point in hiding, this time: Dimitri knew he was there. Dimitri had always known. Dimitri had merely suffered his presence, a true king, pitying and austere.

He kept his hand on his sword. No fool he: he had understood Dimitri’s menace. And yet—here he was, wasn’t he? He kept coming back. He kept—

Never mind.

Moonlight streamed in across the mosaic floors, the destroyed frescos; white moonlight, white as milk, threading like lace through the shattered walls of the chapels. Felix peered into each as he passed them, but the lost prince had strayed elsewhere tonight, it seemed. Perhaps he was pacing the outer balconies, trying to abate the ghosts who plagued him.

And then, as his boots slipped on half-broken stone among the wreckage, he saw him.

Sitting at the foot of the cracked altar, behind an enormous pile of rubble, his lance slung uncomfortably across his knees, Dimitri had his head bowed, shoulders hunched. Moonlight slashed across his face, illuminating his closed eye, his long lashes and dirty hair. When he came close, Felix saw that his chest was rising and falling, a long, even rhythm, barely perceptible.

He was asleep.

Felix paused, and then slowly came closer, crouching in front of him. This was … unusual. He had been certain the boar did not sleep, anymore—that he spent his nights raving and muttering, swearing vicious revenge on a woman he hadn’t seen in five years, begging uselessly to Felix’s fucking _dead brother_. Certainly he always looked exhausted: his face drawn and sallow, eye blackened with lack of sleep. He barely washed, and that only when the Professor forced him to. He didn’t eat, to Felix’s knowledge. Except, of course, he must, somehow, because even Dimitri could not survive on blood and death alone. Perhaps … perhaps Annette ...

It didn’t matter. Whatever Dimitri did to keep his body alive didn’t concern him.

In this light, there was something almost—peaceful—to Dimitri’s face. Sleep softened him, and his anger, now vanished, seemed only like a dream. The longer hair made him look younger; not as he had looked five years ago, bright lights and false smiles, but younger still. Vulnerable.

Felix hissed between his teeth. It was useless and nonsensical to feel nostalgic. That Dimitri—the Dimitri of old—was long gone. In his stead was a corpse, possessed with bloodlust.

Dimitri shifted.

Before Felix could take in a single, startled breath, he was flat on his back on the filthy stone, ears ringing with the shock of it; and a murderous beast was straddling him. Gauntleted hands stroked dangerously down either side of Felix’s face.

‘You disturb my repose,’ Dimitri growled, bare inches from him. His knees were on either side of Felix’s hips; his cloak fell atop them, full and foul. Felix grabbed at his arms, bucking hard underneath him, kicking out: but Dimitri’s weight rested on top of him, his strength immense, his hold unbreakable. The bite of steely claws was cold on his skin.

‘Boar,’ he gritted out, as panic rose in his throat. Dimitri was so close, his breath so hot on Felix’s face. ‘ _Boar_ —’

A pause.

‘Felix,’ Dimitri said, soft, like a prayer. Out of the moonlight, there was no chance for Felix to see his face—only angles and shadows, and the gleam of his eye. ‘Ah.' He sighed. 'Of course.’

'Let go of me,' Felix spat. 

‘Be silent.’ The metal fingers tightened, pinpricks of pain. Felix felt blood bead up. Slowly, he ceased struggling, his chest heaving with a fear that climbed in his throat like vines.

Dimitri only looked at him, considering, his face impassive. Felix could hear his own heartbeat pounding loud in his ears; he could have sworn a second beat was following it, much further away but unmistakably there. And Dimitri’s chest was pressed to his, his breastplate leaving dark smears on Felix’s coat. His hair fell against Felix’s neck.

The echoes of their struggle faded in the enormous crypt. Felix's harsh breaths were white in the cold.

‘Felix,’ Dimitri repeated, and his other hand strayed to Felix’s hair, an almost absurd caress.

Then it took hold.

Then it pulled.

Felix shouted, his head thrown back, throat fully exposed. Dimitri answered him with a growl, a hollow grunt, and his mouth descended rough on Felix’s neck; his teeth tore through the fabric of his turtleneck, biting— _biting_ —where the bruises were—

‘Ugh—ah—’

‘Why do you come,’ Dimitri demanded, around a mouthful of his flesh. ‘Why _do you keep coming_. Have you not already lost all hope of me? Do you not already loathe me, Felix? Have you not hated me for years? Is it that you fear for your friends’ safety? I assure you, I have no intention of killing them if they do not disobey my orders.’

Felix swallowed. His fingers tangled in the fur at Dimitri’s neck, pulling and twisting, though no amount of struggling could tear Dimitri away from him.

Then Dimitri lifted up his head. The smile on his lips was sickening.

‘Or—ah.’ And with the gauntlet grasping Felix’s face he touched his mouth. ‘Is it desire for—this?’

He clenched his thighs, lowering his hips to Felix’s groin. And Felix felt him, as hot and as hard as though his erection had not abated since their last battle. To his shame, his own cock was aching, pressing at the front of his pants, and _leaking_.

The smile widened.

‘You're an animal,’ Felix rasped.

Dimitri chuckled. ‘Always so aggressive. Now … now I understand.’ His pointed thumb slipped between Felix’s lips, and Felix tasted steel and hard cold and the tang of spilt blood. ‘I warned you, Felix,’ Dimitri added, almost conversationally. ‘You knew what would happen, if you came back.’

Felix said nothing.

‘You want it,’ Dimitri said. There was something very like surprise in his voice, almost human, and Felix hated it, hated that his body was responding, hated that—yes—he wanted it, wanted the boar’s force, his body, his violence, wanted to be—to be held down and— _fucked_ —

‘You’ve always wanted it,’ Dimitri murmured, like a revelation, and then he replaced his hand with his mouth.

His tongue invaded Felix’s mouth, plundered it, ravaged it. He tasted metallic, like a thunderstorm, and the kiss was wet, their lips slicking together sloppily. It might have been the kiss of an innocent, if it wasn’t for the way Dimitri’s hands held his head down against the stone. Felix moaned under the onslaught, grasped helplessly at Dimitri’s arms, at his shoulders and his neck; weak for once in his life, and yet harder than he had ever, ever been—burning, pulsing, against Dimitri’s armored thigh, wanting nothing more than to rut against that stiff, unyielding pressure. Dimitri kissed him hungrily, desperately, and Felix registered too late that the gauntlets had let go, too late to stop him: Dimitri ripped through the leather straps of his coat with terrifying ease.

He yelped. ‘ _Fuck_ —’

Rucking up his coat, stroking down his waist, Dimitri dropped one hand to wrap around his thigh, and the other to palm the bulge in Felix’s pants. A horrible whine erupted from Felix’s throat, and his hips jerked up, frantically, into that touch.

‘That’s it,’ Dimitri murmured. ‘Ah, Felix—if only I’d known—’

‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ Felix snapped, panting hard. It was too much and it wasn’t enough—it was never going to be enough, not when Dimitri was touching him, _stroking_ him, perfect awful friction sending sparks up his spine. His body was singing, flickering in and out of existence. ‘I could be anyone. You get hard from killing, I could be _anyone_.’

‘That,’ Dimitri said, even as he rocked his hips into the dip between Felix’s upraised thigh and his groin, grinding mindlessly against him where he was most sensitive—the weight, the heat of him, as shameless as that of a beast in rut, ‘is a lie.’ 

Felix showed his teeth. ‘Don’t pretend, boar king. I saw you. You could have taken me on the battlefield, blood in your maw, gore on your face—you wanted to; don’t deny it now.’ 

_Don’t deny me now_. 

‘Yes,’ Dimitri admitted, easy as that. His gauntlet narrowed around Felix’s thigh to the point of pain; Felix knew, without a doubt, that purplish marks would show on his skin, stark and hideous, a mark of possession that wouldn’t fade for weeks. ‘I wanted you, then.’

He couldn’t listen to this. ‘You want death.’ The words fell from Felix’s lips even as he worked his leg higher around Dimitri’s hip. ‘You _enjoy it_. You get hard from it. You’ll kill and you’ll kill and you’ll kill until it secures you that damned, ugly, cursed revenge of yours, until there’s no one left on the battlefield but you. You won’t be happy until we’re all _dead_ in your service. Is that how you’ll die, boar?’ He drove his thigh upward savagely, until cock was pressed against hot cock, swollen and obscene and so damned good— ‘Alone?’

‘I have been alone for five years,’ said Dimitri, soft and low. He bent his head, ghosting his lips across Felix’s skin. ‘Is this how you speak to your king, Felix?’

‘A mad king is no king of mine,’ Felix whispered. 

Dimitri grinned against his mouth. ‘Liar.’

That kiss was no less bloody, no less vicious. Dimitri bit at him, licked across his lips. And Felix’s chest heaved, his hands lost in Dimitri’s fur, his head snapping back, hitting the stone. But the fight had not died in him—nor would it, until the day he breathed his last—and it was with a renewal of fury that he bit back, bit down till he tasted blood, Dimitri’s blood, and said, with that blood on his lips: ‘Just _fuck_ me, you fucking coward—you want it, you want me, do it, fucking do it—‘

A smile in the dark.

‘Very well. Only remember that you asked for it.’

‘I—ah!’ Broad hands took hold of his hips, forced him onto his knees. Felix gasped, a viscous shame in his mouth, as Dimitri’s unforgiving grip took him by the neck, pushed him down onto his elbows and forearms, and stripped his pants down over his ass.

‘Nnngh.’ Felix’s cheeks burned. Behind him, Dimitri shifted. The gauntlets dropped onto the stone with a solid _clink_. But he was still wearing gloves, and it was that leather that smoothed over Felix’s skin as Dimitri spread his cheeks, thumbing him open. Exposed, hot all over, Felix gritted his teeth and endured Dimitri’s silence.

Then Dimitri’s hands fell away, and the loss was worse, somehow, than the touch had been.

Felix heard a rustle of leather and armor as Dimitri undid his belt and opened his pants. He set his forehead against his wrist and closed his eyes. His breath came fast, his heart pounding a painful beat against his aching ribs. He was so hard, a touch might destroy him.

Just as he thought he wouldn’t be able to take any more of this throbbing, humiliating silence, Dimitri’s touch returned, parting his cheeks again, exposing his opening to the stinging air. Felix swallowed back a pained little gasp, and actually _felt_ himself twitch.

Dimitri bent over him and spat on his hole.

Twice.

His thumbs were next, pressing lightly around Felix’s hole, spreading the slick. They dipped in, just the tip, barely enough to reach the first knuckle, barely enough to stretch him, but Felix felt the intrusion in his gut. Dimitri hummed behind him, the long line of his body hot against Felix’s back, thumbing him open: Felix heard a sweet loud wet sound, and, eyes burning with stinging, unshed tears, he thought of Dimitri stroking himself as he watched Felix’s hole, foreskin sliding over his length, precome dribbling down the fat cockhead—

Then it was no use imagining it: Dimitri’s cock was pressing between his cheeks, hot and _big_ , ah, so damn large—Felix would never be able to take all of it—he parted his lips to protest, but Dimitri, uncaring, pushed him further down in one shove and took hold of his hip, and guided himself into Felix’s ass.

The tears fell, then.

Felix’s mouth opened soundlessly against the stone. Saints, _Saints_ , Dimitri was—was opening him—pushing into him in one long rough slide of his cock into Felix’s ass, breaching him, filling him, making him full. It _hurt_ ; it threatened to tear him apart—and then, somehow, when Felix thought he could take no more, when he thought there was no more to take, Dimitri filled him even more, feeding more of that enormous length into his hole, into his gut, into his stomach—

‘Ah—ahh—’ His fingers scrabbled against the stone; his knees buckled underneath him, and Dimitri’s arm came solid and strong around his waist. There was a dull howling in his ears. At last Dimitri’s pelvic bone came to rest against his ass: his cuissardes fast against the backs of Felix’s thighs. And Felix—had him. All of him.

The stretch was incredible, impossible. It felt impossible that Dimitri should be _in him_.

‘Haa,’ said Dimitri, stroking up and down his sides, undoing buckles and straps and shoulder braces until he found Felix’s thin shirt, the heat of his skin through the fine linen. ‘Mm.’ His hips gave a little jolt forward, driving the head of his cock even deeper into Felix’s body, and Felix bit the back of his glove against the whimper that came unbidden—humiliating, shamefully good.

Then Dimitri pulled back, drawing out, and the void of it shocked Felix anew, the sensation of being emptied out. Tears trembled in his eyelashes. Dimitri bent low over him, planting both of his hands on either side of Felix’s head, and thrust back in again, brutal and sure, so that Felix cried out, cried against his arm, cried loud and wanting.

‘Ah!—ah, ah—I _—‘_

Dimitri wasn't listening. He gave him no more mercy. He mounted and took Felix like the animal he was.

Felix lost count of his cries, of the embarrassing tears he smothered in his sleeves, of his own dizzying, shivering, unsteady desire, even of whatever pleasure he might take from the encounter—he was conscious only of Dimitri, was swallowed in Dimitri, was utterly overpowered. Dimitri’s hand in his hair, gripping his head down. Dimitri’s hips pistoning in and out of his ass. Dimitri’s magnificent cock dragging inside him, scraping his inner walls raw. His murderous groans, so far gone they didn’t even sound like pleasure; his heavy breaths against the back of Felix’s neck. The ferocious rhythm with which he fucked Felix, as though he had lost himself entirely, as though this was as good to him as killing. As good as any death.

‘How long have you wanted this, Felix,’ Dimitri murmured against his skin, panting hot and painful. ‘How long have you been waiting for me to fuck you, I wonder?’

‘I don’t,’ said Felix, tasting salt. His face was burning with the shame of it, of being taken in this way, of not having fought back, of wanting it at all. ‘I—I don’t—ah, ah,’ and then, voice breaking: ‘ _please_. _Please,_ oh—’

‘You always saw me,’ Dimitri said, driving into him in one magnificent thrust that left Felix keening for breath. ‘Always, always—you saw me, beneath the mask I wore. When I wouldn’t, myself … —ah, Felix.’ He held himself inside, rutting against Felix’s ass, and sighed: ‘I understand—now—why you hated me so.’

Felix choked on a sob. His thighs were shaking with the strain of holding himself up; his cheek was flat against the smooth mosaic, his belly almost to the floor. Bent over him, covering him, Dimitri fucked him in long, swift, merciless strokes that made him twitch and gasp: his voice soft and desperate and hopelessly, mortifyingly needy: _ahh-aahhhh-ah-aah_. The cathedral and the moonlight had disappeared from his eyes. He could feel nothing but the stunning heat and weight of Dimitri’s body moving atop his, driving into his, claiming him as surely as if he had opened his chest and grasped his heart.

‘You feel,’ Dimitri said, faintly, almost softly, ‘ah, you feel—mm.’

‘Ah—fuck, no, fuck, _fuck_ —’

Felix’s orgasm stole over him in a breath. His hips snapped forward, and his cock pulsed, utterly untouched, as sudden, vicious bliss throbbed through him, and he spilled into his coat; his thighs finally gave way and he was held up by nothing but Dimitri’s battering cock; his body clenched down so viscerally around Dimitri that he felt it in his mouth, so vital and painful it was.

His climax went on and on and on, unrelenting, driven to impossible, dizzying heights by Dimitri’s ruthless thrusts—and then, finally, he slumped forward, shivering, dazed, yet still—ah, goddess—still taking Dimitri deep, all of him, in and out, his hole loose and twitching feebly around that incredible girth.

‘Good,’ Dimitri crooned, stroking his gloved fingers through the hair at the base of Felix’s skull; ‘you are so good, Felix,’ and pulled out until only the tip of him remained inside, slamming back in again the next second, an impossibly long drag that scraped against Felix’s prostate and made him moan, made him shake, ‘I would have you like this—every—night.’

Then he grinned against Felix’s neck, hot and animal. ‘I will.’

* * *

When it was over, Felix staggered to his feet. His coat was filthy; his clothing was torn. He could feel Dimitri’s come trickle down his thigh. But he lifted his chin and erased the last tracks of tears from his cheeks and he looked his king in the face.

Dimitri. The boar. Towering, monstrous. Hair falling into his single remaining eye—black armor clinging to his body—fur over his shoulders. He was little more than a wild animal now, as though all of Felix’s long ago accusations had come true in the worst way possible. He looked nothing like himself.

He looked more like himself than he had in ten years.

Felix loathed him. Loathed this thing he had become, this creature who had erased Dimitri from the world, this bloodthirsty monster who had bent him on his knees and taken him and had never, ever asked permission.

And loved him, he knew, as desperately as he ever had.

‘Happy now?’ he snapped, restoring his cloak to his shoulders, adjusting his shoulder brace. ‘Have you—’ His voice was hoarse, cracked through. ‘—had what you wanted?’

Dimitri smiled.

His hands came up, stroked Felix’s hair back from his face; curled around the back of his neck. Felix met his gaze, unflinching even at the sight of the despicable derision in his eyes.

‘Have you, Felix?’ Dimitri said, softly, in amused disdain.

‘This wasn’t about me, boar,’ Felix said. ‘You didn’t fuck me as a favor; don’t tell yourself that story.’

Dimitri’s eye slid sideways, over his shoulder, and something of that horrible absence returned to his face. ‘No,’ he murmured, to someone Felix could neither see nor hear. ‘No—you’re right; perhaps it was never me he wanted at all. Perhaps … ’

‘Shut up,’ Felix snarled. ‘Stop. Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare.’

Dimitri tilted his head. Said nothing.

‘I’m leaving,’ Felix said, tearing himself away. He was cold. He was damned cold. ‘Talk to your ghosts when I’m—gone.’

Dimitri laughed. The sound was awful. ‘Oh, Felix.’ Pitying. ‘They never leave.’

The thought of it—that Dimitri was hearing these dead voices, these _delusions_ , while he was fucking him, while his cock was splitting him open—was worse than even the pain had been. Felix closed his eyes. He made himself take a step, and then another.

‘Felix.’ His king’s voice, commanding: stopping him, pulling him back, back, forevermore back again.

‘What.’

‘You’ll come back tomorrow.’ It was not a question.

Felix inhaled, chest clenching. Then he walked away, though his body was bruised and pained and aching, walked away from this cursed cathedral, and its ghosts.

Dimitri’s mad murmurs followed him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > What reasons did the Counselor have for coming here, so late at night? It mattered not; Felix leaned back his head against Dimitri’s shoulder, cheeks flaming with sudden shame, as the shadowy figure of the Counselor fled the cathedral. Their footsteps dimmed and disappeared, and Felix closed his eyes, knowing without a shred of doubt that the truth of what they had seen would make the rounds of Garreg Mach by morning.
>> 
>> ‘You realize, boar,’ Felix said—and was gratified to hear that his voice was, despite everything, as steady as his hand around his sword on the dawn of a new battle, ‘that by morning everyone will know.’
>> 
>> ‘Let them know,’ Dimitri growled.
> 
> Rumors spread. 

What happened next was this:

They kept fighting. Dimitri kept killing. The Professor led him into battle, as blank-faced and calm as ever, and the Blue Lions followed as one. Felix too followed, sword in hand, with anger in his heart and an ache in his head.

They tended to their wounded. Mercedes was the busiest of them all. Ingrid fought like a woman possessed, flying overhead and raining hail from on high. Ashe, from his position as a sniper, took down enemies faster than Felix could draw breath. Annette’s spells were deadly rays, decimating battalions at a time. Even Sylvain trained, relentlessly, uncharacteristically, practicing axe and lance forms in the training grounds long after dark.

They had five years of separation behind them, yet it was as easy as rain to fight as a class again. Their instincts had not grown duller with passed time. Still, the war had taken its toll on them; a bitterness had found them. It was in Annette’s haunted face, in Ashe’s exhausted resistance, in Ingrid’s steely-eyed perseverance, in Sylvain’s cynical asides. It was in Felix’s muscles, in his eyes when it rained, in the hurt in his wrists when he lifted his sword. For five years he had traversed the Kingdom, fighting for Fraldarius, holding the line, gritting his teeth, obeying his father’s orders, and thinking—and thinking—

Thinking Dimitri was dead.

They felt the loss of Dedue. Even Felix, who had never liked him for reasons he had long refused to acknowledge, had grown to rely on him in battle; and often when he thought he would see him at his right, he would turn to find his side unprotected. Dedue had left a chasm behind him, a loss, and it felt unnatural that he should be dead. Felix expected always to see him, standing at Dimitri’s side.

But Dedue was gone, and so, in truth, was Dimitri. All that was left was a feral beast who navigated on instinct, and it fell to Felix to watch over him now.

At night, he returned to the cathedral. Where Dimitri was, where the beast was—waiting. Waiting.

Sometimes he said his name. _Felix_. A smile in that once-beloved voice, teasing, daunting. And then the boar king lumbered into view, dragging his lance behind him, made immense and monstrous by that filthy cloak. His eye gleamed in the shadows. And Felix couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

 _Felix_. Circling him, a predator marking his territory. And then he was on him, his mouth devouring Felix’s mouth, his hands on Felix’s throat, forcing his head back, and Felix grappled at him and kissed back, ferociously, giving good for good, worse for worse.

Dimitri seemed enthralled by this. He slammed Felix against a pillar, pawing and tearing at the straps of his coat, biting at his jaw, drawing blood—and Felix gasped, torn between revulsion and a fierce, inconvenient, marvelous arousal. It felt _good_ to be held down, to have his wrists dragged up above his head and pinned by one of Dimitri’s gauntlets; to have Dimitri’s tall furnace of a body pressed against his from shoulder to thigh, and to know that he could not break free—that he would not break free, even if he wanted to.

He didn’t—ah, goddess. He didn’t; want to.

 _Felix_. Dimitri panted his name open-mouthed against his throat. Heavy breaths, as his chest rose and fell. His hands roamed over Felix’s chest, gathering up his shirt and pushing his cold gauntlets underneath, wrapping them around Felix’s waist: steel on his flesh, the inherent power and threat in it. He was hard and moaning and _wanting_ , that animal body pressing against Felix’s body, so alive that it took Felix’s breath away. He wanted to grab onto that vitality, to force it back down Dimitri’s mouth until he fucking _choked_ on it.

 _Felix_ , Dimitri said, and Felix panted gently as Dimitri worked his way down his body, removing buckles and undoing belts, until he had him bared, until he could, with the greatest delicacy, wrap that gauntleted hand around Felix’s cock and—Felix, hissing, clutched at his shoulders and groaned his pleasure and his pain—begin to jerk him off.

Dimitri brought him off like that, once, nothing but pressure and the incredible promise in that grip; and yet gentleness, and yet … tenderness, almost, or so Felix might have thought, had he been a weaker man. But beasts did not feel tenderness. It was …

It was—what? It wasn’t tender, it wasn’t sweet, what Dimitri was now: not when he folded Felix in two and fucked him from behind, groaning against his back and gripping his hair. It wasn’t kind, when he laid Felix out on his coat on the filthy floor and gripped his thighs over his shoulders and shoved his cock into his body. It sure as hell wasn’t loving.

Dimitri fucked like he was in heat, like a compulsion, like the means to an end. When he was done, he rolled off Felix and got to his feet and moaned to his ghosts, as mad as he had ever been. Felix was left to pick himself up. Felix gathered his clothes and walked away with Dimitri’s come still in him.

It was shameful. It was humiliating, what Dimitri did to him: what Felix allowed him to do.

After the sort of battle that left lesser men weak and exhausted and wishful for rest, Dimitri paced and roared and pounced, a caged animal looking for respite, for release, for absolution. He had Felix on his knees and took him like that, hands gripping his hips so fiercely he left bruises, until Felix was moaning, gasping, senseless and burning, his skin alight, his eyes stinging. He pressed him into the floor and rutted against him, hips pushing mindless into Felix’s groin, hot cock against Felix’s hotter cock, swollen and dripping and good. Felix’s nails tore at him, sank into his neck, grasped inelegantly at his waist, as he parted his legs and took him between his thighs, welcomed his weight with a gasp, bit fiercely at his lips. When he was away from the cathedral he felt empty, bare, lacking.

Once, Dimitri sobbed against him, plastering himself against Felix’s chest even as, hips stuttering, he came, shiveringly—his seed dripping from Felix’s hole—and then, brusquely, he pulled out and lifted up his thighs and then his hips and buried his face between Felix’s cheeks, his hot tongue lapping up his own come. Felix was so startled and so fiercely turned on he came for the second time that night, shouting, his dick twitching and dribbling semen all over his stomach.

When he stepped out of the cathedral, it was with the awareness that he was returning to the world of the living. With Dimitri—time stretched out, became elastic and inconsequential. Hours streamed endless together. At times Felix would see dawn peer through the rose windows, would see the stained colors expand beautifully over the stone floors, over the ruined chapels, over Dimitri’s sallow face.

But most often it was the dead of night when he crossed the bridge. The cold bit at his heated skin, and made the knowledge of what he had done much heavier on his shoulders.

He reached his room on a tired side-step. Another time, he might have detoured to the baths earlier on; but the hour was late even now, and a war council awaited him at the end of the long night. Weariness hounded him. His hair fell loose, undone by Dimitri’s careless grasp, and with a sigh he worked his fingers over his aching neck, swearing he could still feel that masterful grip.

He removed his clothes. The shoulder brace, the fur-lined coat; each belt falling in turn, and his swords laid reverentially upon a commode. His shirt, long sleeves stained with the sweat of their exertions, and with the smell of Dimitri’s body. In his turtleneck, arms and shoulders bared in the stinging air, he lifted up a foot on a chair and bent at the waist to unhook and peel off his gaiters. He disposed of his leggings and small clothes.

A huff of tired breath.

He crossed his arms to remove his turtleneck, the fabric clinging damply to his chest, and caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror.

A sign of true vanity: there was one in every one of Garreg Mach’s dormitories, for the purpose of the more sartorially-minded students, one of which Felix had never been. It had scarcely ever occurred to him to look longer than strictly necessary, and the war had long stripped him of any affectation he might once have had. Felix dressed for functionality, and spent more time in the choosing of his swords’ sheaths than in the choice of his own clothes.

But now ...

He pulled the turtleneck over his neck and tossed it aside, too fascinated to care where it ended up. Feet planted, thighs firm, he looked over his body.

The marks of Dimitri’s hands showed stark on his skin. Marks on his hips, purpling, in the shape of each of Dimitri’s fingertips. Marks on his chest, red and piercing, where Dimitri had dug his nails sharp into Felix’s pectorals. Marks on his thighs: Dimitri’s gauntlets had wrapped around them fully as he slung them over his shoulders, lifting Felix’s ass bodily off the stone floor. Bitemarks on his shoulders, his biceps, his abdomen, his hips, his collarbones. Black rings around his neck. Dimitri had yanked his head back as he fucked him from behind, had taken him by the throat and not touched him anywhere else, as though that was enough, as though that was all that was needed to hold Felix obedient; and in truth it was—it was. Felix, caught, captured by his mad king, gasping for air, heaving for breath, had tipped back his head and closed his eyes and taken it all.

Felix lifted a hand to those blackened marks around his throat; traced their edges, unflinching. They went deep. They were broad. Dimitri had not been gentle, and bruises from his fingers were impressed on Felix’s flesh.

He’d been collared.

Like a hound.

The ghosts of Garreg Mach looked on, impassive. Felix breathed in. Tightened his hand, though it could not possibly encompass the breadth of the bruises.

* * *

In this world were few truths, and one was simplest: no secret could be kept for long.

Sure, no one questioned Felix when he kept watch in the cathedral; no one thought to challenge or examine his reasons. It was understood that Felix’s attention was on Dimitri always. It had been so five years ago; it was so now, when a chasm deeper than even Felix’s rage separated them. He was, too, the only one who confronted the Professor, demanding they do something about the situation— _the beast is going to get himself killed_ —bitter words in his mouth, affecting brashness while fear closed around his ribcage; yet knowing he spoke the truth.

They smiled, shrugged, demurred. Byleth was ever inscrutable.

The truth of it was, Felix should have scouted the perimeter; should have made damn sure no one could approach them in the dead of night, when none but Dimitri’s cursed specters roamed about. But Felix was no prudent man.

This was why he was on his back, half-dressed, and Dimitri was bending low over him and freeing his cock from the confines of his armor, when a startled sound—a breath, a misstep, a gasp—had him rearing up and rolling onto his knees and reaching for his sword in one smooth, even movement; this was why, when he met the great wide eyes of the Counselor and saw their gaze skitter fearfully over to Dimitri, he felt nothing but a sick recognition that _he should have expected this_.

‘I … ’ Their voice drifted in the stale air. ‘Your Majesty … ’

Behind him, Dimitri wrapped an arm around Felix’s chest, and said, his voice a low, even rumble: ‘Leave if you wish not to face my wrath.’

Ever dramatic. What reasons did they have for coming here, so late at night? It mattered not; Felix leaned back his head against Dimitri’s shoulder, cheeks flaming with sudden shame, as the shadowy figure of the Counselor fled the cathedral. Their footsteps dimmed and disappeared, and Felix closed his eyes, knowing without a shred of doubt that the truth of what they had seen would make the rounds of Garreg Mach by morning.

A slow, slow panic rose in him, swallowing him from the lungs up. Dimitri, the giant animal that he was, only pressed and nuzzled his face against his neck as though to scent him, his gloved hands traveling up Felix’s chest under his turtleneck. His raging cock had not abated against Felix’s ass, hot and fat.

‘You realize, boar,’ Felix said—and was gratified to hear that his voice was, despite everything, as steady as his hand around his sword on the dawn of a new battle, ‘that by morning everyone will know.’

‘Let them know,’ Dimitri growled, and pushed him down, one hand on the flat of Felix’s shoulders. He fitted the other to the hollow of Felix’s hipbone and pushed his cock between his thighs, sighing shiveringly at the friction of it. When he was like this— _ah_ —when he rejected the mantle of the beast and was almost human again, almost—Felix could not help his body from responding in kind. His senses were dancing, singing, sparking. Already Dimitri had almost forgotten the incident.

He forced his numb lips to speak. ‘They’ll say I’m your—your fucking whore.’

‘As they should.’

Saints. Oh. He—

‘Is that what you want?’ Felix asked, vicious and low and desperately, fiercely aroused at the thought of it. ‘You want everyone in the monastery—the Professor, the knights, our _friends_ —to know that the one-eyed demon fucks me at night? It’s not enough for you to mark me, to fill me, to use me like a cheap slut; to ensure I—what; fuck—belong to you—‘

‘You already do,’ Dimitri said, possessive and flat, and stroked his hand down Felix’s abdomen to his groin, palming the swell of Felix’s cock under the fabric of his leggings. ‘Don’t you.’

 _Yes_.

‘No,’ Felix spat, even as Dimitri unspooled his belt.

‘You lie,’ Dimitri sighed, ‘even to your king.’

Should Felix glance down, he would see Dimitri’s leather-bound hands pull his own dick out of his leggings, wrap mesmerizingly around the base, and stroke upward. His lower body clenched down at the sensation, and he cried out as the buttery gloves dragged deliciously over his heated flesh, as Dimitri pressed his thumb down on his slit, smeared slickness over his crown.

Dimitri nosed behind his ear, open-mouthed, and Felix arched in his grasp, knowing that he trembled— ‘Oh, Felix,’ Dimitri sighed. Said it again, in Felix’s ear: ‘Felix … ’

‘Get on with it,’ Felix managed, voice hoarse.

A smile. ‘You came to me, Felix,’ Dimitri murmured. ‘You always do.’

‘Ah—shut up, you animal. Take it. Fucking take me.’

‘Remember, then—that you belong here with me,’ growled Dimitri, ‘remember—that you’re mine to do with as I please—‘ and pushed him down flat against the stone and thrust merciless between his thighs, tightening his grip on Felix’s dripping cock to the point of exquisite, anguished pain, until he spilled on the filthy floor, until Dimitri’s own come splashed across his skin, soiling him, dirtying him, and Felix was left moaning, dazed and broken.

Dimitri was not done with him even then. He wrapped his arm around Felix’s waist and he wrapped his hand around Felix’s throat— _ah! goddess_ —and pulled his head back, tilting his face to the side to smear their mouths together.

Felix whined against his lips and licked his tongue across them, lifted one hand to touch Dimitri’s cheek. He was panting softly, electric aftershocks were still coursing through him, his knees ached from kneeling too long; and Dimitri cradled him against his chest in an embrace that, in another world, might have been called tender.

* * *

Whispers rose in his path. Felix ignored them all.

He stalked through the monastery, gripping his sword, and scorned the side glances and breathless murmurs that surged in his passage. Monks and Knights of Seiros scampered to let him pass. But when he had gone, when they thought him out of earshot, their voices, though hushed, climbed with excitation. _Have you seen him? ‘Tis he—the Fraldarius heir—who—_

Felix spent most of his days at the training grounds, decapitating dummies with a hard-earned passion, slashing through their straw chests with the most ferocious of his sword forms. Dimitri didn’t bother showing up at the war councils, and his empty seat stood stark and conspicuous at the Professor’s right. He dreaded the day when even those calm-seas eyes would look at him with disgust in them.

It never came.

It took him entirely by surprise when Annette was the first to approach him.

‘Felix,’ she said, taking him by the arm and cutting him in the middle of a complex sword study, and then, when he snarled unseeingly at her: ‘it’s almost night.’

He stared at her, and then wiped sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Annette. The training grounds. _Right_. She was, he realized with a jolt, telling the truth. Long shadows were descending between the low columns, and the light was a particular shade of dark gold, slowly fading out. His sword arm fell.

‘You missed dinner,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Again.’ And proffered a covered plate. ‘Brought you some?’

‘... thanks.’

He ate sitting in the arcades, tearing meat from its bones with his teeth. Bestial, perhaps—the thought made him grin, then made him grim. Annette sat beside him, chattering, and then, eventually, falling silent, and leaning her head against his shoulder. It didn’t even occur to him to shrug her off.

‘Felix,’ she whispered, frowning a little into his sleeve, plucking at his wrist.

‘Mm.’

‘You would tell us, wouldn’t you, if anything was—well—wrong. Right?’ It wasn’t quite a question.

‘Right,’ said Felix.

‘Even if—?’

She trailed off, and after a moment he tilted his head to look at her. ‘If.’

A rosy flush invaded her plump cheeks. ‘If it had something to do with his Majesty,’ she said, in a rush.

‘He’s not king yet,’ was all Felix found to say.

‘Felix! I’m serious!’

‘I’ve got it under control,’ Felix said.

Annette frowned fiercely at him. ‘You’ve never had it under control when it comes to His Highness. It’s true!’ she insisted, when he just kept looking at her. ‘Five years ago—you said you couldn’t stand him—but—you kept sparring with him!’

‘I did.’

‘And after we heard about his—his execution—you were the only one of us who thought he might have survived.’

‘I was right,’ said Felix wryly. ‘Or was I.’

‘He’s alive,’ said Annette sadly.

‘He’s a raving animal and a dead man walking. He’s going to destroy himself running after his precious, furious revenge, and we’re fools enough to follow him into the Eternal Flames.’ Bitterly, Felix rubbed the back of his glove across his mouth, and sighed. ‘ _I’m_ fool enough.’

‘The monks are saying,’ she said, and stopped.

He could guess. ‘Yeah.’

‘Is it. True?’

He shrugged. ‘True enough.’

‘Oh, Felix,’ she breathed, and took his hand and held it fast. Felix watched their entwined fingers for a long moment, unspeaking, and then, looking away, squeezed back.

* * *

And then, because the Saints had it in for Felix and all that he cared for, Sylvain cornered him at the end of a war council. They had discussed their upcoming journey to the Valley of Torment; tempers had run hot and uneven; their strategies were all over the place. Felix had no patience for anything beyond a sword hilt heavy and warm in his hand, and training till sundown.

But. ‘Felix,’ Sylvain said.

‘What.’

‘Don’t go yet, alright?’

Felix paused, frowning; Sylvain had crossed his arms and looked down at his feet, worrying at his lower lip. It was an old childhood habit, anxiety-induced, which he normally kept firm under control, well-hidden under his easy smiles and bawdy manners. The sight of it nagged at Felix, made him uneasy, impatient. He had no tolerance for Sylvain’s antics—no leniency in his heart for irresponsible fooling around. But now Sylvain looked grave. Sad.

‘What,’ he said again, suddenly knowing what was coming.

‘Just,’ Sylvain said, and sighed. ‘Felix.’

‘Speak your piece or I’m leaving.’

Sylvain’s eyes flicked up to his. ‘Is he forcing you?’ he asked, plain as that.

Felix shut his mouth with a snap. Sylvain’s eyebrow twitched, the corners of his mouth turning down unhappily. ‘Ah.’

‘No,’ said Felix.

‘You go to the cathedral every night,’ Sylvain said. ‘When do you sleep?’

‘I sleep enough. Is this your business?’

‘It’s my business if my king is forcing my best friend into sex,’ Sylvain snapped, and Felix’s eyes widened; his lips parted; he looked away. ‘Is he? Felix.’

‘He’s not,’ Felix said, between his teeth, ‘forcing me.’

‘Ingrid told me, you know. He just about strangled you. Nice to have to hear that from her.’

Felix suddenly felt very, very tired. ‘Was I supposed to tell you?’

‘Um,’ said Sylvain, ‘yes? Obviously? Look—’ He showed his empty palms. ‘You keep to yourself. You always have. I respect that. I don’t want to intrude … much. But His Highness is not—in his right mind—’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘He doesn’t care who he hurts,’ Sylvain said flatly. ‘I don’t think he’ll care that he hurts _you_.’

A hard beat pounded at Felix’s temples, a taut little headache. He set his teeth, looking at something indistinct and blurred over Sylvain’s shoulder, and said: ‘I don’t care.’

‘Whatever he’s doing to you—’

‘We _fuck_ ,’ Felix said harshly. ‘You might be familiar with that particular concept.’

‘And that’s why there’s bruises on your throat and bruises on your wrists,’ Sylvain said, plainly disbelieving. ‘Because you fuck.’

Felix scrubbed at his hair. ‘Sylvain—’

‘Look,’ Sylvain interrupted, ‘if it was … as it was, five years ago … the two of you as you were then; him pretending to be oblivious and you acting like _you_ , always looking at him, always caring a damn sight more than you liked to let on: I wouldn’t be so worried. If you’d solved your differences then … ‘ He shrugged. ‘I guess things would be pretty different now. But when we heard about his execution—I’d never seen you like that. For all the years you kept telling us Dimitri was dead, you’ve never looked like you did then.’

‘Like what,’ said Felix quietly.

Sylvain grew somber. ‘Like the world had dropped away. Like nothing else mattered. Those past five years, ah … you’ve never fought like that before. I saw you. _I was with you_. I stood next to you. I saw it happen. I saw you kill. You looked like you enjoyed every minute of it.’

He had. That was the worst of it. For all that he disparaged the boar’s revenge fantasies, he was guilty of the same. For five years, he had killed Empire soldiers and Empire spies, indiscriminately and dispassionately—because it was war, because war was the only thing he truly was good at; because, though he had claimed to disbelieve Dimitri was truly gone, a part of him had died the day his execution had been announced.

Dimitri had come back to life. That part of Felix never had.

He looked away, unable to bear a second longer of Sylvain’s tender, sympathetic gaze. ‘He’s not forcing me,’ he repeated. ‘I wouldn’t … he wouldn’t. No matter what.’

‘Right,’ said Sylvain, and Felix was abruptly, shamefully, ridiculously thankful for that easy, negligent acceptance. He told the truth as he understood it, and Sylvain believed him. Nothing seemed simpler in a world made of strategies and sharp lies. ‘Alright, then. Those bruises, though—did you get Professor Manuela to—’

‘I want them.’ The truth of it was a lucky fish in Felix’s mouth. He swallowed it, surprising even himself. His fingertips were at his wrist, tracing the blackened, yellowing branding he knew encircled his skin, underneath his glove. ‘I _want_ them, Sylvain.’

Proof that Dimitri was alive, inscribed on his body. He repressed a shudder.

Sylvain’s face went through a number of emotions, none of which Felix knew quite how to read. ‘... right,’ he said again, more slowly. ‘So that’s why. Feelings and anger be damned, huh? He never knew to control his own strength.’ A short bark of a laugh. ‘You’d better make sure he doesn’t break you along the way.’

* * *

Felix had been a swordsman from a child. Before Glenn’s death, he had been possessed with a fierce desire to exceed his brother in skill and in speed: besting him in combat had been his sole motivation, no matter how many times Glenn swiped his feet out from underneath him, nor how many times he swept his sword hilt out of his hand with nary but a laugh and a toss of his head—Glenn, exasperating, sarcastic, _audacious_ Glenn, whom Felix adored and so jealously envied.

The loss of his brother had been a loss of the soul, a sudden cold emptiness inside of him. Nothing had ever filled it. Felix would never fight him again; he would never once defeat him; that victory lay forever out of his reach. Glenn had died in Duscur, and Dimitri—sweet, kind, gentle Dimitri, Felix’s favorite friend—had gone with him, taken by the void.

Even still, even now, when he heard his brother’s name on Dimitri’s lips, Felix felt consumed with a rage that overcame his better instincts. The selfishness of it rotted in his lungs and putrefied in his throat.

Felix was a swordsman. He fought best at close range, in melee. Archers were his downfall.

His name, screeched in Ingrid’s faraway voice, had him turning from the bandit in whose chest he had just buried his Zoltan—yet too late, in truth, to dive away from the arrow that twisted dizzyingly down towards him—he jolted aside anyway, and the arrow point tore horribly at the side of his arm, dragging a trail of fire through his flesh and casting him bodily to the ground.

Panting, bleeding, pressing his hand to the wound, he looked up at the archer, their bow drawn once more, and knew that the next would go through his eye.

The arrow spun ...

Dimitri caught it in mid-air.

One moment he was gleefully tearing into the entrails of an unlucky thief; the next he was standing in front of Felix, immense, magnificent, blood matting his hair to the side of his neck; the arrow clutched in his gauntlet, broken clean in half.

‘Look out,’ Felix snapped, and the next arrow went through Dimitri’s shoulder.

He looked down at the point that protruded from his collarbone, impassive. Then spun on his heel and hurled his javelin across the length of—oh, Seiros— _the entire battlefield_ , catching the archer clean into the chest and then all the way down. Felix stared, working himself onto his haunches, and breathing hard. Blood seeped between his fingers, staining his glove.

Dimitri turned back. The look on his face was staggering.

Unspeaking, he reached down and hauled Felix up against him. Felix grabbed at him, as Dimitri’s arm came around him, steadying him.

‘Your shoulder.’ Felix’s voice came out gravelly, horribly coarse.

Dimitri looked dismissively down at it. ‘Does it matter?’

‘You have an _arrow_ in your _collarbone_ ,’ Felix said, between his teeth.

‘There are things far worse in this world,’ said Dimitri, and without looking away from Felix he lifted his lance and cast it through a passing bandit’s head. The man gurgled, split apart, and crumpled at their feet. Felix tried not to vomit.

The battlefield raged on. They looked at each other.

Dimitri’s gauntleted hand stroked down the side of Felix’s face. ‘Can you fight?’

‘Yes,’ said Felix, by rote. Whatever else happened, he could always fight.

‘Good,’ Dimitri growled. ‘Kill them all,’ and Felix heard his king’s command in his damned _blood_.

Later: when his sword arm was tired and sore, and his body was singing with the kind of defiant pride that always came at the end of a successful fight; when Mercedes had seen to his wound, a burst of Faith magic seaming his skin together, and the Professor had clasped his shoulder with a half-smile; when, returning to the monastery, they ate, an exhausted little group gathering in their old classroom, huddled together like animals—Dimitri disappeared, leaving them all behind.

Felix took the time to eat, and to bathe; and then he went hunting after his mad king.

* * *

The moon had risen by the time he crossed the bridge. White lace streamed in through the collapsed ceiling and the great arched windows, stretching out on the filthy mosaic—long, spectral fingers—and, illuminating statues of long-dead saints and bishops, distorted their shadows into monstrous silhouettes. The cathedral was alive with strange, echoing noises, little songs and soft sighs, as though Dimitri’s ghosts had come to the end of their irreality and surfaced into the world. Felix walked slowly. He was conscious of a fantastic fear in him, an awareness of a different universe, spinning slowly into this one. He had never been religious; yet something about this sepulchral cave of a cathedral troubled him. It was a night for monsters.

Dimitri was slumped against the half-cracked altar. His armor lay, blackened with grime, on the floor beside him, and he wore nothing underneath but a thin, sweat-soiled shirt and trousers. As Felix approached him, he lifted up his head slowly, his eye glassed over. His shoulder was bleeding, sluggish: crimson stained the torn fabric of his shirt.

‘Can’t you get yourself healed, boar?’ Felix asked, lip curling. His voice echoed in the hollow nave. ‘Are you so much of a beast you can’t look after yourself?’

‘Waste of effort,’ Dimitri murmured back, his eye slipping shut.

‘It will be,’ Felix sneered, ‘if you die.’ He knelt in front of Dimitri, though, lifting one hand to his shoulder. Dimitri flinched back, snarling, every inch the animal. His face contorted in pain. ‘Does it feel good?’ Felix pushed on, ‘killing yourself?’

‘Not yet.’ A bare whisper. ‘Not yet.’

Felix slapped him. Dimitri’s face jerked. He barely reacted, blinking slowly.

‘Get a better hold of yourself,’ Felix said, acid dripping from his tongue. ‘If you get yourself killed now, Faerghus will fall. Is that what you want? Your people subjugated to the Empire? Fhirdiad annexed? Soldiers burning down villages, bandits overruling the Kingdom? Your _fucking_ Kingdom, boar king! You seem to have forgotten it!’

Dimitri’s blurred gaze lifted. ‘I’ll have her head. I swear. She’ll pay.’

‘Revenge on Edelgard,’ Felix said, swallowing back bile. ‘Is that all that matters to you?’

‘The dead matter to me,’ Dimitri said. ‘You care not.’ With one lazy swipe of the hand, he knocked Felix backwards, so that he went sprawling, legs tangled with Dimitri’s, on the filthy floor; Dimitri loomed over him, his hair framing his face. ‘You care not for your own brother, Felix? For Glenn?’ He lowered himself to his hands, speaking in Felix’s ear. ‘He speaks to me, you know. He speaks of you.’

‘Shut up. Shut _up_ ,’ Felix snapped, ‘Glenn is _dead_ , you’re speaking to _nothing_ —’

Dimitri’s hand brushed the side of his face. The leather of his gloves was warm and oddly soft. His thumb touched Felix’s mouth. ‘Do you know what he says?’

Felix shut his eyes. ‘Don’t. Fuck—don’t.’ And then, as his throat closed up: ‘Please.’

Dimitri hummed, and kissed him. His mouth was hot and shockingly sweet, his tongue sweeping in between Felix’s lips, meeting Felix’s tongue slickly. He relaxed his hold on his body, letting himself lie down on top of him, full and heavy, broad shoulders and narrow hips and full, muscular thighs. His hands clasped Felix’s hands and pinned them on either side of his head, fingers entwining.

Felix moaned, and slipped his leg up. He pulled it up above Dimitri’s hip, jerked him closer, and felt the burning line of his erection nestling against his belly. He had had that fat hot cock in his hand, between his thighs, in his _body,_ enough times that it should not have been a shock, a surprise, even a joy. But it was. It was.

Dimitri broke off, pressed his mouth against his ear. ‘He’s proud of you, Felix.’

Felix sobbed, snarled, and shoved up so violently that he managed to throw Dimitri off entirely, managed to throw him onto his back and throw a leg over him, to ride out the surprised jolt of his hips and sit atop him, panting. ‘I told you to _shut up_.’

Dimitri lay underneath him, tilting his head up, baring his throat, vulnerable and quiet and calm. The laces of his shirt were undone, and the sweep of his collarbones was pale and hollow in the white moonlight.

He looked up at Felix, and in his eye was an impossible obedience that infuriated Felix so damnably he blinked back stars.

Dimitri said, softly, ‘Take what you need.’ And his hands lay on Felix’s thighs—for once not clamping down in a fierce, furious grip, nor reversing their positions. For once his strength was restrained. The great beast tamed and trembling.

‘Fine,’ Felix gritted out. ‘Fine.’ His hands shook as he undid his belt. His cock was stupid hard, and he gave it an even squeeze as he pulled it out of his leggings, settling his thighs more firmly on either side of Dimitri’s body. The soft, sensitive head was slick in the pale moonlight, his prick flushed and swollen and _thick_ in his hand. He spread the slick around a bit, getting his palm sticky, and sighing.

‘Open your mouth. You’re going to take my cock, boar king, and you’ll thank me for every inch of it. Open your damn mouth.’

Dimitri’s lips parted at once. Felix breathed.

Then he pushed his cock in Dimitri’s mouth. And didn’t stop, though Dimitri gagged, until his pelvis was pressed to Dimitri’s face; until his cockhead was pressed up tight and close inside Dimitri’s throat. His eyes closed. He moaned.

The sensation of it was pure, astounding bliss. Soft, even pressure around him: Dimitri’s body shuddering underneath his, and the wet sounds of it, the warm suction, the hint of—ah, teeth—

‘If you bite me,’ he managed, ‘I will tear your dick off,’ and pulled out, enough, to look, enough to see—see Dimitri’s wet lips stretched out around his length, see however the fuck the one-eyed demon looked when he had his mouth full of cock.

Staggering, it turned out.

Dimitri’s lashes lay long and dark against his cheeks; a high flush rode on his skin. Felix worked his fingers through the fine hair at his temples, and with a hum and a sigh Dimitri somehow took more of him inside, opening himself up, choking himself around Felix’s length with undeniable pleasure. He was sucking now, gagging gently on the head, hungry for it. Blinking—ah, wetness there—he moaned, and Felix _felt_ him swallow, thickly—

He had no leverage. It was all on Felix to move: he had full control to shove his cock as far down as it could go; also to pull out till only the head remained on Dimitri’s tongue, full and wet on Dimitri’s lips. He wrapped his hand around Dimitri’s throat and felt the incredible stretch and stretch and bulk of himself, inside.

With a groan, he settled his thighs on either side of Dimitri’s head and rolled his hips forward, fucking his cock deep into Dimitri’s mouth, all the way in and then all the way back out, wetly, obscenely, dragging the underside on Dimitri’s tongue. Dimitri lay underneath him, and took it, neither protest nor riot, compliant and unseeing and blind, throat slack; yes, these were tears trembling in his lashes ...

Panting, Felix picked up a rhythm, thighs burning and arms shaking with the strain of holding himself up as he fucked Dimitri’s mouth; the sounds of it were so wet and so slippery that Felix groaned to hear them. He felt Dimitri’s big hands on his thighs, on his ass, pulling him in, digging into his flesh. His pace hastened, his fingers clenching in Dimitri’s hair, crushing Dimitri’s face to his pelvic bone on every thrust.

He came with a choked cry, dripping come on Dimitri’s tongue, and jolted with provoking pleasure as Dimitri swallowed and swallowed around him, grip tight. Lips parting around a sigh, he rutted his hips into Dimitri’s face—gasping, as he rode the high, with aftershocks and shivering moans, which he could not control.

The cold returned to him slowly. He became aware of his battering heart, of the shivery feeling down his spine, of the great cavernous cathedral echoing still with his cries. He slipped out of Dimitri’s mouth, and with trembling fingers tucked himself back in, staring down at Dimitri’s face. It was the face of a saint, caught in agony and beautiful for it.

He swiped his hand over his mouth. He did not offer to reciprocate.

* * *

‘I loved you,’ Dimitri said, later, as they knelt on the filthy floor while Felix bandaged up his shoulder. ‘Then.’ He spoke slowly, evenly, as though Felix had not just fucked his mouth till his voice was hoarse.

Felix refused to look up at him. ‘We were friends once, boar.’

‘Friends,’ smiled Dimitri. ‘Yes. Yet friends do not feel as I did for you.’

‘Nor as I did, for you,’ Felix admitted. Then he heard himself say: ‘And now?’

‘Now,’ said Dimitri, ‘there is only the dead, and their revenge. Only their voices, calling for her head. There is no place here for love.’

‘And then?’ Felix asked. ‘When you have torn off Edelgard’s head—what will your ghosts demand from you?’

‘There is no need for a wild animal at the head of a Kingdom,’ Dimitri said evenly. ‘Did you not always tell me so?’

Felix swallowed. His hand was on Dimitri’s shoulder, and this close he could tell that Dimitri’s chest was shaking, very finely. His bones were stark under his greying skin, collarbones sharp, ribs prominent. As broad as his shoulders were, his hips were narrow and slender. He stared at Dimitri as he tiredly tugged his shirt back on over his shoulder.

Voice rough, he said: ‘I loved you too, you know. Then.’

Dimitri nodded. His head came to rest against Felix’s, forehead to forehead.

They fell silent. They did not move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they are so dumb. i love them

**Author's Note:**

> Title is slightly modified from John Donne's Holy Sonnet 7. 
> 
> [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/o_honeybees) Come say hi <3


End file.
